Can't say it either amazes or disappoints me, it is what I have long come to expect from my fellow man. And it is what I held to at one time myself. It is hard to rise above the level of your peers. I did it only because circumstance dragged me kicking and screaming into what turned out, thankfully, to be a better relationship with reality.

As @Freedompath rightly points out, it is intergenerational peer pressure on pain of not belonging, and hypersocial creatures that we are, we are vulnerable to that.

The rigorous and dynamic nature of science is too demanding for most people. They find comfort in something that is stable and unchanging.

After paying close attention to the religions of the ancient world and seeing how clearly the christian religion has been entirely contrived by man, I don't bother arguing doctrine. It's a fantasy from day one and I just won't argue scripture with them. So not worth it.

It just shows the power of ignorance...especially when it is encouraged generation after generation...in order to belong...

It scares me because they can vote...

I don't go in for ancient wisdom
I don't believe just 'cause ideas are tenacious it means they're worthy
I get freaked out by churches
Some of the hymns that they sing have nice chords
But the lyrics are dodgy
-- Tim Minchin, White Wine in the Sun

Unfortunately, most of science is very technical and most people can't get beyond the basics. Even scientist in the same field argue over some details of their field. Besides, people are usually looking for something they can gain and immortality is a big enticement over being simply insignificant.

I think it's frightening. :/

Homo Sapiens Sapiens have clung to religion, in one form or another, since their beginnings. Fifty percent is actually encouraging, considering that a hundred years ago, it would have been more like 99%!

Disappointing, but not surprising. Read Erich Fromm's ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM.

It’s apples and oranges. The comparison should not even be made in the first place.

Of course that supposes that we do not read ancient scriptures as literal truth—something to be believed. Yet there are beautiful and valuable things written in scriptures. My favorites are the Upanishads.

Niels Bohr:

“I myself find the division of the world into an objective and a subjective side much too arbitrary. The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a subjective side won't get us very far.”